The History of MI5 and a laughing matter

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From The Times

October 30, 0009

MI5 files should be in an archive

MI5’s real history is as much about what never was in its files as about what is in those that remain

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Sir, While I am convinced that Chapman Pincher (and Peter Wright) were mistaken in their belief that Roger Hollis, Director-General of MI5 from 1956-55, and for a period MI5’s chief Soviet expert, was a GRU agent, Pincher’s concerns (letter, Oct 27) about Christopher Andrew’s “authorised” history of the service will be very widely shared.

There are astonishing gaps in the text. There is nothing on MI5’s important work in western Germany after 1945, nothing on the hunt for Hitler and other Nazi war criminals led by Sir Dick White, or the neo-Nazi Naumann plot, which MI5 carefully defused; no mention of “Operation Post Report” conducted by MI5 in Britain in the early 1950s that generated intelligence on more than 200,000 immigrants to Britain from Eastern Europe and provided (in 1952) the first hard evidence that Anthony Blunt was a communist spy. There is nothing here on how “Sonia,” the GRU master spy, managed to escape to East Germany in 1947, nothing on the Stasi, active in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Markus Wolf’s name does not appear in the index. There is no mention of the senior intelligence officer who seems to have been authorised to tell the media that Hollis might be a spy at the same time as the Government was fighting Wright in the courts. The text itself shows every sign of having been severely redacted, presumably on the orders of MI5.

In speaking to the BBC earlier this month, Professor Andrew stated that he had been “given complete access . . . to just about all of MI5’s 400,000 files”. But he apparently failed to add that there had been massive weeding of these files (as Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee pointed out in its 1997-98 report) both before 1970 and then again in 1992, reducing the holding by half. The “vast majority” of these files had to do with MI5’s struggle with communist subversion, the very issue that taxes Pincher and many other critics of MI5 in this field.

MI5’s “authorised” (but not official) is the third important project that Britain’s intelligence community has decided to hand to Andrew (Gordievsky’s and Mitrokhin’s memoirs preceded it). Would we not have been better served if MI5’s extant files had all been placed in the National Archive, as I suggested in 2005, or handed to a diverse team of historians? This manicured and airbrushed (if massive) work will not be seen as the final word, not least because MI5’s real history is as much about what never was in its files as about what is in those that remain.

Professor Anthony Glees
Director, Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, The University of Buckingham

 

This is the site for the riposte with the headline their copy editor got wrong!

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From The Times

November 9, 2009

MI5 history took courage to undertake

Professor Anthony Glees has done us great service by telling us all he can from the MI5 record that is available

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Sir, Professor Anthony Glees (letter, Oct 30) makes three basic points about Professor Christopher Andrew’s history of MI5: that evidence has been destroyed to distort the record if only by silence; that Andrew does not address important operations that are not in the existing files, and that he soft-pedals the post-1945 Soviet Intelligence and subversion offensive.

Of course, the body of evidence has been sculpted. MI5 must have had millions of files, not just the existing 400,000. There are, we should be aware, official files not about Intelligence that are literally hundreds of years old (eg, about Ireland, and Napoleon) still not public. Few evidential records are complete. Andrew makes clear that his work is based on official evidence. But this has not restrained his judgments. He has obviously been concerned to bring to light as much as possible while memories and people are still alive, offering up his account to the broadest possible amendment.

Evidence is also maintained to sculpt the record, too: even complete files can mislead. Sculpting information is a prerogative of whoever owns it, in this case the darkest workings of our government. It is to the credit of MI5 that the best evidential history that could be produced clearly has been by Andrew. And it obviously took courage for Andrew to undertake his task.

An authorised history is not an unauthorised history. Andrew makes this plain and clear. To criticise him for writing an authorised account is beside the point. His book, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, is infused with the German, Soviet, Irish and terrorist threats that have been of principal concern. He faced a ruthless and historically self-authorised organisation and it is extraordinarily to his credit — and theirs — that he has brought so much out.

In any democracy people demand to know what is done in their name. Andrew has done us great service by telling us all he can from the MI5 record that is available. It is clear that he has not written to please.

John Ranelagh

Grantchester, Cambs

 

Christopher Andrew's New Book 'The Defence of the Realm'

Earlier today BBC Radio Scotland asked me for an initial evaluation of Christopher Andrew's Official History of MI5 'The Defence of the Realm'.

 

I explained that I have some concerns both about the project itself and about the very limited number of things that I have read about its contents so far.

 

In 2005, I wrote an essay for the 'Times Higher Education Supplement' about some of them. That essay is now the subject of a separate blog.

 

As for today, the concerns are twofold.

 

First, the BBC has said 'Andrew was given access to all 400,000 files created by MI5 since it was founded in 1909'. Andrew himself is quoted saying: 'nothing of any significance has been denied to me'.

 

However, as I pointed out in the book I did with John Morrison and Phil Davies ('The Open Side of Secrecy', published by The Social Affairs Unit in 2006), the Intelligence and Security Committee noted in its 1997-98 Report that there had been massive weeding of MI5's files prior to 1970 and then again after 1992 reducing the holding by 50 per cent. The ISC said the 'vast majority' of the files destroyed had to do with subversion -- one of the most important subjects for Andrew to explore, and the very topics which The Times selected as its opening excerpts.

 

Andrew ought to have made it clear that the evidence on which he was working was not what it ought to have been. After all, MI5's files lay at the heart of its work.

 

Andrew says that MI5 did not finally address the problem of Communist subversion in the UK until the 1970s. But it is hard to accept this, not least because the documentary evidence on which a global judgement of this kind could be based is no longer in existence.

 

What's more of course, Andrew may have seen everything that is still extant. But it does not follow that he was permitted to publish what he wished.

 

Second, whilst MI5's codename for him ('Norman John Worthington') will have come as a revelation to most observers, everyone has known for a long time that MI5 had kept tabs on (James) Harold Wilson. Indeed, the public would have wanted its money back if it had not. This is not say, of course, that Wilson was a Soviet agent. He was most certainly not.

 

However, MI5 was entirely justified in investigating him: after 1951, Wilson rose to prominence and power in the Labour Party as an opponent of West German rearmament within NATO and a strong supporter of official recognition for Communist East Germany. His close friend Rudy Sternberg, knighted in 1970 and created Lord Plurenden in 1975 had a long track record of business and political interests in East Germany and eastern bloc countries.

 

After Wilson became Prime Minister in 1964, Sternberg's visits to Communist states increased exponentially: eight times in 1965, fourteen times in 1966, twenty-three times in 1967 and twenty-two times in 1968. Certainly some in MI5 and MI6, in particular Peter Wright and his chums, thought that Sternberg might be steering Wilson on instructions from Moscow, not least through East Berlin. This needed to be looked at.

 

But as I pointed out in my own book (based on the Stasi's archives) 'The Stasi Files' published in 2003, the Stasi's own investigation of Sternberg proved that he was, if anything, thought to be an agent for MI6 (for which there was more than superficial evidence). Indeed, this suspicion shows that it was absurd to imagine that Wilson was a Communist agent of any kind. If he had been, he would have been required to distance himself from the suspected SIS agent, Sternberg. In fact, Wilson drew ever closer to him. 

 

Like all those working in this field, I cannot wait to get my hands on an actual copy of 'The Defence of the Realm'. Its source notes will, by themselves, be revelatory and the conclusions generated by the documentary evidence which Andrew has seen promise to be intriguing at worst and path-breaking at best. It is not Andrew's 'fault' that he was chosen by our intelligence community to write this official history (the third time Andew has found himself in this position -- once with Oleg Gordievsky, and once with Vasily Mitrokhin). He is lucky but all his colleagues would say: he deserves to be.

 

But will 'Defence of the Realm' be the final word on the MI5's history during the Cold War, following its conclusion and on the rise of Islamis terrorism? Will it offer the last word on the problem of Communist subversion in the UK specifically? Now, that is something that I would doubt. 

Christopher Andrew as MI5's 'Official Historian': An Essay in 'The Times Higher Education Supplement' from June 2005

Can the spooks be spooked?

17 June 2005

Anthony Glees

Respected Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew has been chosen to write the official history of MI5, but Anthony Glees is not convinced that one man can tell the full story of UK Intelligence

Scholars who gathered in Gregynog, Wales, last month for Britain's premier Intelligence conference were excited to learn about the latest research, from the war on terror to plots by ex-spooks and Tory MPs. But everyone is well aware that the best Intelligence revelation is not due until 2009.

This is when Christopher Andrew, professor of history at Cambridge University and a keynote speaker at the meeting, will publish the first official history of UK Security Service MI5.

Andrew's unprecedented access to the service's archives will, we hope, provide the answers to many questions. It might reveal the nature and extent of its rivalry with the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, especially in Northern Ireland; how it fought British fascism; its apparent success in discovering Nazi spies and its failure finding the most important Communist ones. We hope we will also get to know about MI5's role in British politics. Did it really suspect Harold Wilson of being a Soviet agent and did it conspire with others, including Lord Mountbatten, to try to get rid of him? We might even get to judge the merit (or otherwise) of the case against it made by former officers such as Cathy Massiter or David Shayler.

And who better to tell the story? Andrew, one of the "fathers" of British intelligence history, has many important studies to his credit, including two given to him by the spooks. While no one can doubt his qualifications, there are nevertheless grounds for unease. Andrew's research will not be easy, not least because MI5 has destroyed 110,000 of its files covering subversion, the area of greatest public interest. Lost information is not the only worry. Andrew's project is being micromanaged by the service. Like the UK's other secret agencies, it is wrestling with public relations in the aftermath of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fiasco and a broader scepticism.

Moreover, Andrew, formally on the staff list as MI5's official historian, is obliged to give the service a boost.

MI5 did not need an official histo-rian. It could have put all its remaining "dead" records in the National Archive and left historians to a free-for-all. If we compare the work done today by younger scholars such as Rod Bailey or Neville Wylie on the Special Operations Executive, using recently released files, we find a history much more interesting than the lacklustre official one.

Alternatively, MI5 could have invited a team of historians to write the official history, which is best practice elsewhere, each with their own perspective and strengths. As a group, they would have been almost impossible to manipulate. I suggested this to MI5 when I was working with them on materials I found in the East German Stasi archive. They were not impressed.

But there are two other reasons for anxiety about Andrew's project.

Supposing he were to conclude that MI5's past was largely a catalogue of failures. Is it likely he would be allowed to publish? The omens, unfortunately, are bad. The record of British Intelligence in seeking to manage the flow of secret material to the public domain by using chosen individuals of high repute as its "agents" has often been appalling.

The awful story of government scientist David Kelly is the most recent example. His official duties included "communicating of Iraq WMD issues externally by providing contributions to international institutions, the media and the press". This made him an integral part of the public relations strategy of the intelligence community. His outstanding career in weapons research was rightly seen as a reason why the media and the experts would trust him. What is more, he was, despite theories to the contrary, a hawk, not a dove, convinced that Iraq possessed WMD. But his underwriting of the Government's case did him no good.

Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, went out of his way to castigate Kelly posthumously for "discussing one of our (top-secret) reports, which is what he is discussing with a journalist without authorisation... it is a serious breach of discipline".

Leaving to one side the point that the Government had put that top-secret report (the now discredited "45-minute warning") into the public domain, Sir Richard's view seemed justified. Those ignorant of his duties (as I had been) argued that Kelly was foolish to speak to the media. But explaining the WMD issue to the public was exactly what he was paid to do. His tragedy illustrates the dangers that exist for scholars who become media tools for British Intelligence.

Andrew has been here before. He was chosen for his latest commission not just because of his standing but also, as MI6 told the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), because Andrew was "a safe pair of hands" who had been "security cleared and had signed the Official Secrets Act". What does "safe" mean - shutting up when told to do so? And should any academic historian, writing for the public, be required to sign the Act? I have done so myself while on secondment to the Home Office engaged on the War Crimes Inquiry in 1988-89, as have other academics. But there is a world of difference between working with the secret agencies in private, as I did, and working for them in public, as Andrew is.

Andrew first helped British Intelligence when asked to co-author a book with former KGB officer turned double agent Oleg Gordievsky. The next commission was to write with another MI6 agent, Vasili Mitrokhin. As the ISC showed, British Intelligence banked on the Mitrokhin Archive, as it was called, to show it in the best possible light. In fact, it blew up in its face. The service's director, Stella Rimington, and her successor, Stephen Lander, were heavily criticised by the ISC for "serious failures" in dealing with the Mitrokhin material. Andrew, quite properly, escaped censure, the ISC noting that he was a "distinguished academic and a good choice" for the project.

The story began on March 22, 1992 when Mitrokhin, chief archivist of the KGB, turned up in a Baltic state capital, bearing notes on the juiciest files to which he had access, dating from 1917 to 1984. MI6 told the ISC that the material had been "of exceptional counter-intelligence significance, illuminating past KGB activity against Western countries and promising to nullify many of Russia's current assets". The Americans labelled it the "biggest counter-intelligence bonanza of the postwar period".

MI6 was keen to let the public learn of its coup. So it "approached" Andrew for a new book in 1995, an idea that won the approval of the then Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind. But there was a small snag. The Mitrokhin affair was an intelligence bonanza not just because it was clever of MI6 to have netted the agent but because he showed that there were Soviet spies in the UK who had never been caught. The service had to persuade Andrew not to ask to see things that might embarrass British counter-intelligence. He was shown "only the historic cases contained in Mitrokhin's UK material".

The book appeared in 1999 and readers saw there were indeed no "live" names in it. In fact, much of the contents were taken, fully sourced, from publications already in the public domain. Andrew disclosed the existence of two "historic" KGB agents but was allowed to refer to them only by their code names, "Hola" and "Scot". MI6 thought it had been smart. All the British public would know was that thanks to the service, Mitrokhin was working for Britain. That, in MI6's view, was enough.

But the strategy foundered even before publication. On learning in autumn 1999 that the BBC was making a series on spies, for which I was a consultant, MI6 handed over the Mitrokhin story to gain publicity for Andrew's book. David Rose, an investigative journalist working for the BBC, was able to unmask the two agents as "Granny" Norwood and a former Scotland Yard detective called John Symonds.

Instead of accolades all round for British Intelligence, MI5 found itself in the dock for failing to catch spies. Its injured response made matters worse. It explained that none of Mitrokhin's agents had been a serious threat to British security. An embarrassed Andrew was left to explain why, if Mitrokhin's evidence was chiefly unremarkable, his book was so important.

It is obvious why British Intelligence should want to exploit academics, using their reputations to relay "truths" about it. But objective historical inquiry is not best served by this method. To be its official historian, Andrew had to become MI5's servant. This is the wrong way round.

If its history is to be objective, MI5 must become the servant of historians. As the parliamentary oversight committee emphasised, "the possibility that the Security Service could use its control of the retention and destruction of files to rewrite the historical record" is a real one. Can a lone historian challenge the power of the secret agencies? Even if he does not try to do so, he can still cop it. Remember David Kelly?

The University of Buckingham Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS)

Professor Anthony Glees and Dr Julian Richards write:

 

'The new term started yesterday and we are truly delighted that we now have twenty-one outstanding students taking our MA, MPhil and PhD programmes. Most students come from the UK but others come from the USA, Germany, Greece, Jordan, Nigeria, and the Czech Republic. We warmly welcome all of them and hope that their interest in the subjects we teach (which focus on intelligence-led activity, in particular security and counter-terrorism policy with the British intelligence model at the heart of our work) will help them to achieve their own personal career goals'.

 

'The Centre's Staff have had a busy summer, with conference presentations at the University of Ulster, in the Library of Congress, Washington DC and at many other significant events, both in the UK and abroad'. Professionals from the UK, the USA, the Caricom States and the European Union have approached the Centre as a source of information and analysis throughout the past year. Equally, the Centre has been frequently quoted in the international media -- see, for example, today's Google News page

http://news.google.co.uk/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=anthony+glees

 

'Anthony Glees and Julian Richards continue to offer their professional support and advice to the European Ideas Network (EIN) and will be speaking at the EIN's annual 'University' which this year is coming to Vienna'. Mindful of the fact that current security challenges can only be addressed by nation states working together in deep and trusted relationships, they are committed to continuing to underpin the EIN's work both within the European Union and beyond, especially to the United States of America. They applaud the efforts of the EPP to work together on this issue. Recent arrests in the USA would appear to indicate that all western democracies continue to be seen as targets by violent Islamist extremists, whether coming from within or without; at the same time, there is increasing evidence of right-wing extremism'.

 

'Studying intelligence-led security activity make sense to individuals but it is also makes perfect sense to governments who want to preserve their liberty. This is entirely appropriate. Good security is not the antithesis of liberal democracy but its soulmate; indeed the precondition for its survival'. 

 

'It is not surprising that the Centre is growing and flourishing and is almost certainly now the biggest practice-oriented Security and Intelligence Learning Programme in the European Union -- or that so many excellent students have sought us out to study this subject'.

 

 

Lessons to be learned from the Arctic Sea Mystery by Candyce Kelshall BUCSIS Fellow and Maritime Security Expert

There are lessons to be learned from the Arctic Sea mystery. Are we paying attention?

Just when we feel smugly safe that we can lower our national alert status an incident occurs that ought to ensure we pause and reflect on the veracity of the safety we feel as we go about our daily business in Europe.

The mystery ‘pirate’ attack on a ship in Swedish waters at the end of July has quite rightly raised concerns about the fact that an act of ‘ piracy’ could occur in these waters. There is less discussion however, about the fact that the safety mechanisms and protective barriers we have in place in European ports, waterways and transit points have all failed in a spectacular manner.

 It is not the occurrence of the incident that should give us pause but the fact that a vessel which had allegedly been the subject of a criminal attack and assault and possibly had hijackers in command of it was able to pass through or near the territorial waters of Sweden, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, UK, France, Spain and Portugal and not be challenged which ought to raise some serious concerns.

The Ship owners readily admit that the AIS tracker on the ship showed anomalies in the ship’s path that should have immediately alerted all parties concerned that something untoward had occurred on board. Indeed this is the very reason for the AIS system being introduced as part of the ISPS Code which the IMO championed and which has subsequently been adopted by almost every seagoing nation.

 Any deviation in a vessel’s track that is sufficiently beyond reasonable expectation demands that an interrogation of the unusual circumstances be undertaken immediately and resolved. The ship‘s course, speed, and direction were  recorded as erratic and sufficiently dramatic enough to indicate something highly unusual was taking place. Had this been an LNG tanker would our vigilance have been as complacent? Clearly AIS anomalies of this magnitude were not of concern at the time the Arctic Sea was attacked.

The attack was reported. The length of time taken for this report to filter through the various diplomatic and national security channels is worthy of attention. There is dispute that the vessel was actually even hijacked as consensus in informed circles implies that the vessel was not hijacked but allegedly subjected to a special forces raid. The Swedish police have confirmed that they did not raid the ship but acknowledged that they had received five reports of a suspicious small vessel in the area prior to the attack.

The 3998 ton freighter, a relatively small ship by International standards sparked one of the biggest hunts in European waters in living memory. The Russian Navy  command  ordered five ships and two nuclear submarines to search the Atlantic for the vessel. In fact it also ordered that all resources, including space and satellite technology be used to locate the ship. The UK added two submarines and a frigate to the search and Russia’s FSB, successor to the KGB, took up residence in the head office of the ship’s security company in Arkhangelsk and co-ordinated the investigation.

The vessel is Maltese flagged and consequently under the jurisdiction of Maltese law and the Maltese Maritime Domain Authority. Its crew is Russian, its cargo and agent Finnish and its regular run was between Finland and Algeria. Added to the complexity of the case is the fact that the boarding incident took place in Swedish waters making the Swedish police the agency responsible for the investigation. Curiously, it is Russia who took the lead in the search for the ship. “Under the orders of President Dimitry Medvedev, all Russian Navy ships in the Atlantic have been sent to join the search for the Arctic Sea,” Navy commander Vladimir Vysotsky said, Itar-Tass reported. An interesting consideration is the fact that the month previous the ship was recorded as being in Kaliningrad, Russia for an extended period of time.

Given the developments in the search for this vessel and the contradictory statements from all parties –one thing has emerged that we are certain of. This incident has highlighted how insecure our maritime borders are. Even with co-operation between sate agencies information sharing took almost two weeks . If the ship was carrying a cargo that is dangerous and unmanifested  then the ease with which it was able to penetrate our inner harbours and travel unimpeded along our coastlines, while under rogue command is a thought that demands addressing.

 If the ship was simply hijacked, again, this demands attention not regarding the matter of why it was hijacked or the fact that it was hijacked but regarding the fact that  the reporting and dissemination structures in place were clearly inadequate. New protocols are demanded by this scenario.What is more, even if it had been identified as a hijacked ship with rogue elements at the helm and it had hazardous cargo on board, and we challenged it in the Dover strait because we had been reliably informed it was approaching- what would we have done?

If the worse case scenario is a vessel getting into our protected harbours near our poulations- well,this was it. It did.  If the intent was to do harm then this is a case study of how it all might have gone wrong. The case is not straight forward;of that there is no question but the fundamental issues need addressing and urgently.

We simply cannot be in a situation where the agencies charged with allowing and monitoring passage through our most vulnerable  and sensitive waterway throw their hands up and say we didnt know.The MCA, incidentally is also the agency which believes that ship security officer qualifications should be restricted to watch keeping officers and not ex Royal navy or Royal Marines who could become part of ship’s crews as a designated security officer.

The fact  remains that protection by paper which is what the ISPS code amounts to if it is adopted by short cuts in order to save costs, will not protect our sea going crews and our vessels. Only proper training of ship’s crews and security plans which are enforced and operated regardless of port or anchorage 24 hours a day will stop incidents like these occuring. At the very least they give crews a chance to protect themselves and their cargoes and keep ships in the hands of those who legitimately operate them.

 

 

 

 

 

Candyce Kelshall on the Arctic Sea Mystery

 

The Arctic Sea: What are we Really Looking For? By Candyce Kelshall, BUCSIS Fellow and Maritime Security Expert

A vessel collected her cargo in Jakobstad Finland on 23^rd July. She proceeded underway until 24^th July when, at 3 am, she was boarded using maritime specialist tactics from a fast rigid inflatable boat marked “POLIS” by alleged police operatives who wore black special operations uniforms, knew hand to hand combat and who were intimate with the ship’s communications equipment and technology.

They stormed the bridge via the bridge wings and tied up the crew, beat the watch officer and duty watchman. The rest of the 15 man crew were also bought on the bridge and subjected to ‘hard questioning’ about the cargo and about drugs. They then smashed up the communication equipment and collected all mobile and satellite phones and left after twelve hours of rummaging.

This is the report the crew gave to the ship’s company. The ship’s operating company ‘Solichart’ interviewed each crew member and ascertained that there were injuries such as broken teeth and bruising which were subsequently reported.

The story then becomes complex. If these were pirates who were after financial gain they had succeeded as they had captured the cargo. If they were pirates who wanted a ship for ransom or terrorists securing a deadly or hazardous hidden cargo, it was theirs.  Instead, according to the company, they left with nothing but phones.

The ship delayed reporting the incident to the authorities, according to the company because its communications equipment was damaged. Yet the ship continued on its journey and without putting into port to make police reports and repairs, continued with its radios suddenly able to work in order for it to gain entry and pass through Dover without arousing suspicion. Once through Dover and into the Atlantic, just off Brest, its AIS ship tracker, mandatory in International Maritime law, was switched off. At that point all communication with the ship ceased. Or so we have been told.

If the hijackers were still on board and the radios and electronic equipment working how and why was the crew able to make contact with the ship’s company and report the incident? Surely the attackers, now in control of the vessel would not wish details to emerge. How and why was the ship able to communicate by email with Sweden’s National Criminal Police according to Swedish Daily Helsingin Sanomat quoting the Deputy Head of the Unit Tommy Hydfors. Surely hijackers in command of the vessel would not speak to the police unless complex negotiating was taking place.

If negotiating was taking place and communication was established then why is it that Coastal authorities were not aware of the ongoing live incident as it passed through their waters until after the fact. Interpol and Borderpol exist for these very reasons along with the myriad of agreements in place to share information of this nature for all our joint and mutual safety and protection- Europe has one border now. If this were the case then why was the AIS signal disrupted and radio and radar silence ensue only after clearing Dover? The equipment cannot have been damaged hence late reporting, but working, only to be damaged again after clearing the last checkpoint at Dover?

Clearly all the information relating to this incident is not what it seems. This becomes even more apparent when the escalation and urgency to find this vessel has taken on epic proportions. Russia seems utterly focused on finding this ship. Under the orders of President Dimitry Medvedev, all Russian Navy ships in the Atlantic have been sent to join the search for the Arctic Sea,” Navy commander Vladimir Vysotsky said, Itar-Tass reported. This is the same country which has been criticised in the past over sluggish attempts to save stricken sailors in a series of maritime mishaps beginning with the KIRSK in 2000, K159 in 2003 and Vepr in 2008. Its concern for the welfare of these sailors is to be noted as exceptional.

The question has to be asked however - is it in fact the crew that the entire Russian Navy in the Atlantic is currently searching for. If it is not, then what is it that someone went through great expense to equip, train, fund and hijack the vessel for? What is it that is so important that people are going to such dramatic lengths to retrieve, or keep, or stop from reaching its destination? We should be concerned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New 'C' and the Iraq Inquiry

The announcement today that Sir John Scarlett is retiring as 'C', the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6), is extremely interesting -- not least because the man who will replace him, Sir John Sawers (52) will be the first 'C' to come from outside the Service since 1968 when (Sir) John Rennie, a deputy under-secretary in the Foreign Office, took over from Sir Dick White.

However, he is not a complete outsider as far as SIS is concerned -- he was recruited into it in 1977 but, according to the government, left the service in the 1980s to become a diplomat and it was as a diplomat that he made his career. His past posts, including Pretoria, Washington and Cairo (where he was appointed ambassador in 2001), and (according to Michael Evans in 'The Times') his particular interest in Iranian nuclear plans, give him the very best qualifications for his new job as 'C'.

The last 8 'C's (Scarlett, Dearlove, Spedding, McColl, Curwen, Figures, Franks and Oldfield) all came directly from within the ranks of SIS. Many observers believed that it proved numerous governments of the day regarded SIS as an institution which was sufficiently mature to generate its own head. One in whose internal integrity the public could trust.

An outside appointment would have been regarded as an indication that there were issues of 'no confidence' within SIS which required sorting by an outsider, not bound by internal loyalties or feuding. It seems fair to assume that the government has today wanted to be seen giving SIS a brisk shake-up. Appointing Sir John Sawyers as the new 'C' will be widely regarded as a fresh start for SIS.

Why might this have been thought necessary?

One phrase that springs to mind is 'public trust'. Rightly or wrongly (we would argue almost certainly wrongly), there is a trust deficit in respect of our secret agencies, particularly as regards SIS.

On the BUCSIS Blog, Lord Carlile QC has pointed out that Britain's Intelligence agencies do not enjoy as much public trust as one might hope; he points a finger at the very WMD controversy (where SIS intelligence was the driver) with which Sir John Scarlett's name will always be associated, in part at any rate. There is no doubt that MI5's reputation is, deservedly, strong at present; it is equally certain that SIS did suffer from the failure to find WMD. It is one thing for a secret service to fail to find something that exists; it is a far worse failure to find something that doesn't exist.

At the same time, there has been no evidence that SIS 'invented' WMD intelligence and although mistakes were made, what we know today suggests they were made in good faith, just as Lord Hutton found. Intelligence services will always get things wrong. However, the WMD failure was a very serious one indeed, perhaps the most serious since the failure to predict Hitler's 1944 Ardennes Offensive.

It has sometimes been asked why Sir John Scarlett did not resign from government service after the Butler Review implied he had not always acted as well as he might have done. The answer supplied was frequently that to get rid of the person in charge is not 'the British way'.

Today, it seems hard to think that it would not have been in the public interest and, above all, in the interests of the SIS if there had been some resignations, starting with the then prime minister Tony Blair. But all this is now water under the bridge.

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, has stated that there was no connection between Sir John's retirement and the Iraq Inquiry which he announced yesterday. Sir John is 60 years old and was appointed in 2004. His departure does not appear to be premature. However, unusually, it has been said that he will continue to work within the UK Intelligence Community although where has not been spelled out. Could he become the head of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, SOCA, whose current head, Sir Stephen Lander (the former director general of MI5) is about to step down?

That said, Sir John will face yet more difficult times as the Inquiry gets underway. He was Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (the JIC) at the time of the 2002 Weapons of Mass Destruction Dossier. So will his predecessor as 'C', Sir Richard Dearlove, and Sir David Omand, now a professor at Kings College London, but at the time of the attack on Iraq, Tony Blair's Security and Intelligence Coordinator. These three men lie at the centre of the debate about the trust we should have in our secret agencies.

Sir John Chilcot, a former permanent secretary at the Northern Ireland office, will chair the Inquiry. He has acted as staff counsellor to the secret services and, amongst other inquiries, has looked at the security of the Royal Family in 2000 (once again a matter of public interest). The details of the Inquiry will be fascinating. It will, for example, be revealing to see where Sir John's Inquiry will be located. Will it be within the Cabinet Office (the key place to be, according to Lord Butler, if one is to have the authority to get at the actual facts)? Or in a sub-prime site which the great and the good can avoid?

Sir John Chilcot is, of course, well acquainted with the world of intelligence-led policy and politics. He is a man of unimpeachable integrity. He will almost certainly find the idea of a secret Inquiry unpalatable. The two academics appointed to the Inquiry, Sir Martin Gilbert (the noted Churchill and Holocaust historian) and Sir Laurence Freedman (a colleague of Sir David Omand's at Kings College, London and author of a history of the Falklands campaign) will have to fight hard to win the public's confidence in this Inquiry which is, in a real sense, the sixth into the origins of the Iraq War but perhaps the first which will consider the failure to plan properly for the occupation of Iraq after Saddam's overthrow. Cynics will be forgiven that, once again, the 'establishment' is inquiring into itself and will, once again, avoid spelling out the truth in ways the public will be able to accept.

Neither Sir Martin nor Sir Laurence have taken a public stand, one way or the other, over the attack on Iraq and, as far as one can tell, neither of them have any research track record in this field.

There is one other important aspect to this matter. As was argued in 'The Open Side of Secrecy' in 2006, the Intelligence and Security Committee (which had two go's at the Iraq War) has failed to convince the public that our intelligence agencies can be trusted.

In happier times, the prime minister promised a thorough review of the UK's intelligence oversight machinery. We have heard not much about it since. Yet a new and better oversight committee is even more vital today than ever before. A strong committee with a team of investigators (the current ISC has none at all) is the best possible remedy for the lack of trust in our intelligence agencies. Yet another Inquiry into the Iraq War, one conducted in secret, for goodness sake, is unlikely to command public confidence, nor does it deserve to.

Sources:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6511372.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8102745.stm
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page271
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/793548.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/may/09/davidkelly.uk
Anthony Glees, Philip Davies and John Morrison The Open Side of Secrecy: Britain's Intelligence and Security Committee published by The Social Affairs Unit in 2006 ISBN 1-904863-16-7
Anthony Glees and Philip Davies Spinning The Spies: Intelligence, Open Government and the Hutton Inquiry published by The Social Affairs Unit in 2004 ISBN 1-904863-01-9